The Trump administration is changing its rules for pathogen research, and a lab at the University has lost its funding in the process.
Christopher Brooke, researcher and professor in LAS, was awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health two years ago to research how seasonal influenza viruses evolve. In November, he was notified that his grant was canceled for less-than-clear reasons.
“If we could learn more about these processes, that would maybe help us make better decisions when we choose which strains go into the flu vaccine every year,” Brooke said. “To do that, we have to predict how the virus is going to evolve in the future, and sometimes people do pick well, and sometimes people pick poorly, and it makes a big difference on how effective the vaccine is.”
Brooke and his team chose to study seasonal strains that circulated around 15 years ago, making them low-risk to humans who likely developed a degree of immune protection to them. The Department of Health and Human Services had not considered the viruses threatening enough to strictly regulate in the past, according to Science Magazine.
However, the NIH recently changed its tune, tightening their restrictions on dangerous “gain-of-function” research; experimentation that could increase the transmission and virulence of a pathogen.
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Over the summer, the NIH identified 40 GOF projects, and Brooke’s work was flagged a few months after. On Nov. 25, Brooke received notification that his grant fell subject to President Donald Trump’s executive order concerning GOF research, and that he needed to cease work on the project within 48 hours.
The order, signed in May, stated that new guidelines governing GOF research would be established within 180 days from the date of its issue. However, the new guidelines never came.
Looking for answers, Brooke reached out to his program officer at the NIH. She told him that, in the absence of clear guidance regarding GOF research, his grant was terminated just in case the new guidelines were released and implicated Brooke’s project.
“What she told me is that (the grant) was terminated for violating guidelines that don’t exist,” Brooke said. “She told me she doesn’t even know if anyone’s working on developing the guidelines.”
Brooke asked his program officer if he could modify the parts of his project deemed problematic, but was denied. He said he was told there was no room for discussion, and the money had already been frozen.
A Science magazine article published in January illuminated what has been going on behind the scenes at the NIH. The article suggested that disputes over Brooke’s grant may have contributed to the resignation of John Beigel, acting director of the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.
Science reporters wrote they learned that NIH Director Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya was displeased that DMID failed to initially flag Brooke’s study during the summer. In December, NIH staff were informed that Beigel was being replaced.
Multiple Ph.D. students who worked in Brooke’s lab were funded by the now-canceled grant, and were forced to pivot after the termination. Brooke said these students are completing their mandatory time as teacher’s assistants this semester, during which they receive salaries from the University.
“I’m not having to let anyone go right now, but I’m not sure how to pay for the experiments that they need to do to move their dissertations forward and get their degrees,” Brooke said. “By the summer, I will have to start letting people go.”
Though the grant’s termination is personal to Brooke and his fellow researchers, the implications of the funding cut extend far beyond the project.
“If anyone wants there to be the development of vaccines or other treatments that work better against influenza virus or other viruses, we need to keep working to better understand them so that we can develop therapeutics and vaccines and control strategies that target them more effectively,” Brooke said.
According to the World Health Organization, there are around a billion cases of seasonal influenza each year globally, resulting in 290,000 to 650,000 deaths per year.
Brooke said cuts like these also pose a risk to the future of science in general.
“The more grants that you freeze, the more labs are going to have to shut down, the more students and postdocs are going to have to be let go,” Brooke said. “Eventually you’re really going to cut into the development of the next generation of scientists, and that’s a cost that we’re going to be paying for years down the road.”
